The Opinion Pages | Op-Ed Contributor When Wheelchairs Are Cool By BEN MATTLINJULY 31, 2014 LOS ANGELES — LAST week, the celebrity gossip site TMZ posted pictures of Justin Bieber in a wheelchair. He was not at a hospital. He was at Disneyland. As everyone knows, Disney patrons in wheelchairs get to cut to the front of the lines. But as a dispute flared over whether this was Mr. Bieber’s intent, becoming a trending topic on Twitter, one fact remained unassailable: I was there first. One of the great perks of being in a wheelchair — as I have been since age 4 — is being able to cut lines. Sometimes people let you go ahead of them at the grocery store. Sometimes theater and sports arena box offices give you discount tickets. When I was a kid, I often got backstage passes. In short, you get to take advantage of others’ pity — or at least their desire to keep things simple and not cause a scene. You get treated like a V.I.P. You get treated like Justin Bieber, except without the screaming fans. The teen heartthrob’s publicists said that he was just resting an injured knee, not trying to pretend he was, well, like me. But I prefer to think otherwise. After all, they also acknowledged that even without the wheelchair, he would still get to circumvent the endless queues, to avert a riot. The point is that he was not afraid to be seen in a wheelchair, which, to me, is a point for my team. I’ve never pretended to be in a wheelchair to curry favor, of course, but I’ve often felt that I can play the disability card for all it’s worth. I have, I confess, used it to hustle my kids through Disney lines, even though I knew full well that I wasn’t actually going to get on the ride myself. Besides, sometimes you can’t help it. People offer you stuff. Strangers smile at you, give you a thumbs-up, pat you on the shoulder and say, “Good for you for being outside today!” (I can never quite decide whether that’s complimentary or condescending — or both.) The mantra of disability rights is “no pity.” Yet the truth is, taking advantage of one’s disability — or rather, of other people’s solicitousness — is one of the true joys of life on wheels. When I was a kid, before equal-access laws attempted to level the playing field, I often got into movies free. I never asked for it, but I never refused it either. “I’ll just stay in my wheelchair,” I sometimes said, as if it were a consolation for not taking an actual seat from a paying customer. (Still, I had my limits. When sweet old ladies offered to buy me candy or a cookie, it was decidedly creepy. I never once said yes.) This kind of cloying generosity was a great source of laughter when I was growing up with spinal muscular atrophy. My older, nondisabled brother and I used to joke that if we were ever orphaned, or simply needed some extra spending money, we could clean up by begging on street corners. He would accost passers-by while I would act, well, as handicapped as possible, moaning and drooling and contorting my face. Sure, this gallows humor was a sort of defense mechanism. But the constant clash between what others thought they knew about me just from glancing at my skinny, floppy, wheelchair-riding limbs and what we actually knew about me — that I was a smart, alert, regular guy who happened to require a lot of assistance — occasioned much familial hilarity. Now I know better, of course. It wasn’t really funny. And if I want fairness and equality, I have to pay the price — even if it’s full price. But many well-meaning able-bodied folks remain frustratingly ignorant about people with disabilities. We even have a term for it now — “ableism” — though I’m not sure how much it helps. People may know that it’s wrong to exclude or underestimate the disabled, but I fear they’re rarely clear on exactly what that entails or how to behave. There is still something hopelessly “other” about folks with disabilities. Wheelie Justin may be a hopeful sign for the future, when the very image of disability no longer stigmatizes. I’ve long believed in disability pride, a.k.a. Crip Cool (there’s even the #cripswag hashtag on Twitter). To me, that has never meant being an awe-inspiring overachiever, someone who succeeds despite a disability. Rather, it’s the opposite — someone who embraces his or her disability and isn’t afraid to show it. Wheelchairs can be fun. Voice-recognition technology is a blast. Vans with automatic ramps are awesome. And don’t forget our coveted parking spaces. All of which help mitigate the bad stuff. So go ahead and play disabled. As long as it’s done with joy and respect — not to tease or poke fun — I won’t be offended. Just don’t do it for the freebies, which are harder and harder to find these days anyway. Do it as you do anything else, because you think it’s cool. And if Mr. Bieber wants to give me a call, I’d be happy to show him how to pop wheelies. Ben Mattlin is the author of “Miracle Boy Grows Up: How the Disability Rights Revolution Saved My Sanity.
Posted on: Fri, 01 Aug 2014 22:10:20 +0000
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